HUNGRY SHARK WORLD MOBILE USABILITY

2020

VALUE PROPOSITION

  • Uncover usability issues present in the game

METHOD

  • Expert review + Guerrilla testing

IMPACT

  • Expected improvement in the decision-making process - which shark to use, when and how - through stats

  • Expected improvement in comparison of sharks for use and purchase

PAPER PROTOTYPE

PAPER PROTOTYPE & GUERRILLA TESTING FEEDBACK

  • 3 users

  • Confusing range of stats and life

  • No min / max values to the stats gauge and life bar

  • No direct comparison between sharks

  • Not enough information on what shark to use and when to use it

WIREFRAME

Persona 2 with storyboarding

VALIDATION OF VALUE PROPOSITION

  1. Heuristic evaluation following Nielsen Norman Group’s guidelines

  2. RVA (Grounded Theory)

  3. Competitive analysis

  4. Identification of customer segment through personas

  5. Storyboarding of touchpoints in the user journey

  6. Paper prototyping proper for Wizard of Oz

  7. Guerrilla testing

  8. Wireframing using Axure

HEURISTIC EVALUATION RESULTS

  • No way of knowing what the upgraded stats for a shark will be, before buying & upgrading it - strategic purchases impaired, not possible to know how one shark compares to others

  • No way of reading the stats explanation in the “shark selection” screen, only accessible through the main screen

Competitive analysis

RVA (GROUNDED THEORY) RESULTS

Written reviews were analysed to understand what usability issues were being felt by users:

  • 3420 reviews on the Android Play Store & 1050 reviews on the iOS Apple Store

  • Occurrences of keywords in reviews:

    • x1 UI

      • “The UI on the main screen you need to make it more friendly”

    • x27 menu (related to technical bugs)

      • “menu need some to be adjusted so I can find things easier. cool game”

      • “but wish the menu options were more obvious”

    • x22 compare / compared / comparison (related to comparison with previous versions of the game)

      • “there's a lot of shark is missing and the size comparison is wrong”

    • x41 choose / chose (all reviews are related to amount of sharks available)

    • x10 select / selection (all reviews are related to amount of content available)

Note: this methodology did not return valuable insights to the study.

Persona 1 with storyboarding